More Rwandan Hutu Refugees in Zaire Flown Home

4:41 PM EDT
BIARO CAMP, Zaire (Reuter) -
Thousands more Rwandan Hutu refugees, many with appalling injuries, streamed
back to camps south of Kisangani Thursday as U.N. agencies struggled
to clear a backlog of refugees waiting to be airlifted home.

Aid workers at Biaro camp, 25 miles south
of Kisangani, said they could not keep up with the flood of refugees returning
to the camps they fled in terror last week.

They said that at least a dozen people
had died in Biaro camp overnight either from illness or from injuries.

Rebel leader Laurent Kabila Sunday gave
aid agencies 60 days to repatriate all refugees back to Rwanda -- after
weeks of delaying a U.N. airlift. It is a task U.N. agencies
have called impossible.

There are nearly 100,000 Rwandan refugees
south of Kisangani and another 250,000 unaccounted for in Zaire. Their
plight has aroused international concern with reports of massacres at Biaro
and Kasese refugee camps, starvation and disease.

This week aid agencies have been nearly
overwhelmed by the unexpected arrival of rebel-organized trainloads of
refugees. The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said 1,512 Rwandan
refugees were flown out of Kisangani on eight flights by seven planes to
Rwanda's capital and the southwest town of Cyangugu, bringing the total
repatriated since last Sunday to 1,802.

Many field hospitals and food stocks
at Biaro were destroyed when villagers and Zairian rebels attacked the
camps last week, prompting up to 100,000 refugees south of Kisangani to
flee.

Officials say around 10,000 have since
returned to their sites and journalists who drove three miles south of
Niaro saw an uninterrupted line of refugees heading back.

Many could barely walk. Emaciated
children, hollow-eyed from hunger and disease, lay beside railway tracks
to the camp. One man walked on while holding a machete embedded in
his skull.

A UNICEF spokesman said Thursday Zairian
rebels have handed over 62 Rwandan refugee children and adults following
a U.N. demand to know the fate of some 110 people abducted from a
pediatric hospital near Bukavu.

Patrick McCormick said the U.N. Children's
Fund (UNICEF) was "crosschecking" the identity of the Rwandans
against the list of those who were taken away by armed men Saturday at
Lwiro, some 20 miles north of Bukavu in rebel-held territory.

Aid agencies said Monday they feared
some 50 malnourished Rwandan Hutu refugee children and 60 adults, mostly
family members, had been killed after they were seized at Lwiro.

"A total of 62 children and adults
were handed over. The children were spending last night at the transit
center in Bukavu and we understand that they they will be repatriated to
Rwanda."

A rebel-organized train with more than
1,200 refugees pulled into Kisangani Wednesday night and aid workers scrambled
to cram them in a transit camp near the city's largest airport.

"We need more coordination,"
said UNHCR spokesman Paul Stromberg. "But of course given a
choice of late night surprises and no repatriation we can find common ground
with the (rebel) alliance."

Asked whether rebels were trying to drown
aid agencies in refugees in revenge for being internationally condemned
last week for blocking access to them, he said it was hard to say.

"There is a sense that so much attention
was paid to the obstacles we encountered that they are now eager to show
how many people they can bring up to Kisangani," Stromberg said.

But Rwanda's government Thursday accused
the United Nations of delaying the repatriation of the refugees and said
it was ready to work directly with the AFDL to bring them back.

The government statement was in direct
conflict with U.N., European Union and U.S. expressions of concern
this week about the treatment of the Hutu refugees by the Tutsi-dominated
rebels and complaints about a lack of cooperation with aid agencies.

The Hutu refugees fled Rwanda in 1994
and are collectively accused by minority Tutsis of genocide in Rwanda the
same year.

"Due to the U.N.'s hesitation to
execute the repatriation and hesitation to comply with the AFDL request
to repatriate the refugees in 60 days, the government would like to seek
support of all those genuinely interested in the welfare of the refugees
to facilitate the evacution," the statement said.

"The government is prepared to work
in collaboration with the AFDL (Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation
of Congo-Zaire) to undertake the repatriation," it added.

A Rwandan Hutu refugee lobby group said
however the repatriation of refugees from Zaire was the last stage in a
"Final Solution" to remove any threat to Rwanda's government.

The Rally for the Return of Refugees
and Democracy in Rwanda (RDR) called for an international inquiry into
genocide and crimes against humanity against Rwandan Hutu refugees in Zaire.

Reuters - Thomson Reuters Foundation:

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